


shut your eyes and sing to me

by gearsystem



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, post mag 159, we're gonna pretend the apocalypse doesn't happen ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearsystem/pseuds/gearsystem
Summary: He saw me. He saw me. Through the fog, the static, he sought me out and saved me.Why? After everything I said, after I disappeared for all those months, pushing him away to fulfill all of this, and he’s pulling me out?-Martin Blackwood is rescued from The Lonely by Jonathan Sims, and he doesn't quite know what to do with that information.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	shut your eyes and sing to me

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't anything particularly creative or something no one's done before i just needed to write a first kiss/love confession from after 159 for my Health

He saw me. He  _ saw  _ me. Through the fog, the static, he sought me out and saved me.

Why? After everything I said, after I disappeared for all those months, pushing him away to fulfill all of this, and he’s pulling me out?

I couldn’t question it much longer as I sort of fell into his arms. My mind went so fast, speeding off a panic I wasn’t able to catch up with. His hands fisted around my jumper, making sure I stayed put, and I felt a warmth under his grip.

“Let’s go home,” Jon said, a tinge of a hopeful expression peeking through the fear on his face.

“How?”

“Don’t worry. I know the way.” I loosened my grip on him, but I kept his arm in my grasp. He reached his other arm around to touch my hand with reassurance. I would have reacted with more surprise if I wasn’t worried that letting go of him would make me fall back into The Lonely. He held my hand, walking away from the beach, and he looked up at me with this worn, tired, but eased expression. The golden brown of his eyes broke through the neutral haze around us, and I swore I saw something (?) behind them.

Then we were in the basement, next to the Panopticon and my head was spinning for another reason. Peter wreaked havoc on the Institute before he took me, and anything could be around any corner. Panic rose in my throat, the hell waiting for us now that Elias (Jonah?) has an even bigger plot brewing. _Where were Basira and Daisy? Are people outside the Institute safe? Have I ruined everything? Have I—_

Jon’s arms wrapped around my middle and squeezed.

“I’m so glad you’re alright, now let’s get the hell out of here,” he murmured against my chest. I took a mindless, instinctual hand to his head. To keep him steady, ground the both of us in the space we were now sharing. 

He separated us from each other just enough to snatch my hand in his again, and then we were running. Out of the tunnels, out of the Institute, until we were far, far away from Jonah, from the Panopticon, from everything.

* * *

We didn’t stop running until we got to Scotland. 

I shut the door behind me, and Jon is standing in front of me, still and ruffled by the impossible 24 hours we’ve just had.

“We made it,” I say first, cracking the silence of this modest cottage over my knee. 

A sigh leaves Jon’s lips, not of dismissal, but of awe. 

“Yeah. I suppose we did.” He turns to face me, our faces equally worn with exhaustion unlike anything I’ve ever known. My fingers find their way around Jon’s before I know what I’m doing, and he looks down at our joined hands with disbelief. “Oh.”

_ Shit.  _ I must have read into this more than I should’ve. He was saving me from the Lonely because he needed to get out of there himself. How did he get stuck in there anyway? There’s no way he could’ve—

“Sorry, I—” I stumble, pulling my hand back to its resolute place in my pockets but then Jon’s gripping my wrist. There’s no venom in it, his fingertips do not press with control or anger. 

“No, Martin, I… You said. You said, back there that you…” Oh. Oh, Jon. There’s this uncertainty behind his eyes that drives me mad. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, after the way I’ve been to him since he woke up from  ~~ dying ~~ his coma.

“What are you saying, Jon?” He looks up at me, wetness lining his eyes and I want to take whatever’s putting it there and throw it away. Dispose of the pain and doubt behind his expression. But then I may be tossing myself out with the lot. 

“I just. Missed you, is all. I-I’m glad you’re still you.”

“Of course I’m still me,” I say lamely. He laughs in a short burst of air.

“I was worried that The Lonely had too strong of a hold on you, and that I lost my chance to… I’m just glad we’re here. And this,” he says, squeezing my hand in his, “This is fine. Good. It’s-it’s good.”

There’s something else in the twist of his smile that I can’t manage to dissect, but before I can contemplate it any longer, he’s taking his coat off and hanging it on the metal hooks beside the door. I follow his movements, and mirror his motions to the sofa like an echo. For a moment, we sit in as amiable a silence as we can manage.

At some point he suggests getting something to eat out of what we scrambled together from our respective flats, and I find myself next to Jon while he heats up some beans on the stove and pan-fries some toast (Daisy didn’t think to buy a toaster, it seems). I watch myself eat the food in front of me, and every now and then I can feel my body slipping away from me, becoming a bystander to the things it does, but then Jon will touch my shoulder, or my hand, or my back. And my body belongs to me again, for a moment.

—

Then there’s the ordeal of the bed. It’s a twin mattress with a modest frame, because of course it is. I knew hoping for a double was a lost cause, but it was a fantasy I could maintain until it’s 10PM, and Jon and I stand beside each other on the threshold of the bedroom. We just sort of stare for a minute before his voice clips through my barrage of thoughts. 

“Come on, let’s get some rest,” he says, so casual yet so full of unsaid context that I can feel my face heating up before I nod like a soldier.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“If you want, I can change in the lo—”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind, if you don’t—”

“Oh, well I don’t if you don—”

We catch each other’s eyes and if Jon’s face is any indication, I must be as red as a tomato. 

“Let’s not worry about it, then,” I force out of my mouth. 

“Okay.” 

Jon moves to the other end of the room to squirm out of his work trousers and slip into his pyjamas as quick and agile as he can manage with his level of sleep deprivation. I follow suit, and before we know it, we’re sitting on either side of this tiny twin mattress, backs to each other, and Jon’s the first one to talk yet again.

“Do you still feel the way you said?” My heart leaps in my chest cavity the second he speaks and I have to regulate my breaths for the tenth time today. I want to turn around, wrap my arms around him, but this is delicate. This takes a light hand.

“You mean?”

“You said you loved me, past tense, did you mean that you…” Jon trails off for a second, uncertainty lining his words. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Jon, I was sure that I was going to spend eternity on that beach. I thought I was never going to see another person again.”

“I-I know that, I just mean—”

I can’t stand not looking at him anymore and I turn round to catch him doing the same.

“Why did you go into The Lonely, Jon?”

“What?”

“Why did you…  _ How  _ did you get there? Peter couldn’t have taken you, and I…” I avoid his pointed gaze.

Jon is lost for words for a moment, and I swear I can see the gears whirring in his mind, picking what to say. “I went in because I needed to see if I could bring you back. I had to try, at least. I couldn’t bear to just… leave you there.”

I can’t seem to find the air in my lungs. Perhaps Helen put an endless maze within my lymph nodes, making the oxygen have an impossible path in and out of my body. Or maybe I just cannot make myself believe that Jon risked his life just to rescue me.

It’s apparent that Jon notices my dilemma of oxygen being trapped within me because he touches my shoulder as he has been all evening.

“Hey, Martin, come back.”

“You…” I expel the trapped air from my body and some shaky words along with it. “You went somewhere you didn’t know if you could get out of… to see if you could maybe save me?” 

“Well, yeah, I guess I did,” he replies, as if it’s a given. As if it’s not the most absurd and brilliant thing he’s ever said.

“Of course I love you, Jon. Of course I—” I can’t find words to form into a sentence that can convey even a fraction of what’s running through my head.  _ Of course I love you, I’ve loved you for years, I’ve loved you when I was sure you hated me.  _ “I thought I’d pushed you too far.”

“I…” Jon’s eyes are fixed on a portion of the bed neither of us are touching. His chest is rising and falling with a pace I’ve come to know well with him. Words seem to twist around his teeth, desperate to get out, but unknown in their content. 

His warm ( beautiful, golden ) brown eyes meet mine again and I can’t handle this tiptoeing anymore. Not after all the months of hiding away from the world, from him, confining myself to suffer for the sake of saving the world or saving Jon or sacrificing myself or whatever else it was. 

“Do you love me, Jon?” I say, my sight set on him, unwavering but not accusatory.

“Yes.”

His reply is soft, but there’s no hesitation behind it. The tension running through my body releases just a bit. But not fully before—

“Can I… Can I kiss you, Martin?” Jon almost whispers, his gaze moving around my face with something I would have called panic if it weren’t for the smile growing on his lips.

“Please.”

Jonathan Sims’ lips are thin, hesitant, and surprisingly soft. The kiss is small, at first, testing the waters for something neither of us have thought of as possible until just hours ago. I pull back to take a breath, to make sure he doesn’t regret the choice he’s made, to quell the nagging worry in the back of my throat.

I’ve never seen Jon smile so big. I didn’t know it was possible, to be honest. But here he is, face in my hands, beaming up at me. His eyes reflect the dim lamplight back at me and the same wet line around them greets me again. 

“Okay?” I ask, simple, open.

“Yeah, you could say that.” I can’t help but kiss him again.

This time there’s more behind it, a confidence I didn’t know existed, and Jon moves closer to me to deepen the kiss. We stay like that for a few moments before Jon is the one to pull away this time. He looks a bit less elated than he was a minute ago, and that familiar dread lingers in the back of my head. 

“Martin, I just thought I should say before this… I don’t know. I don’t really  _ do  _ this kind of thing and I’m not quite comfortable with… with what  _ this  _ often leads to,” he says in that same fast pace I know well as his overwhelmed voice.

“Hey, hey, that’s okay, Jon. I, kind of figured that, to be honest. It’s okay, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

His shoulders lower, and he breathes. It’s as if he’s exhaling out the anxious thoughts scrambling through his head. 

“Okay, thank you.”

“Let’s get some rest, love, we’ve had quite a day, yeah?”

“Quite a day, indeed,” Jon agrees, the exhaustion peeking through as the adrenaline of our new revelation fades a bit.

We stand up to pull the covers away from the bed and resign ourselves to lying down for the first time in far too long. Jon drapes his thin arm across my chest, his leg covering one of mine. I run a hand through his long, greying hair, and place a chaste kiss on his forehead. 

“Goodnight Martin.”

“Goodnight Jon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: @beholdingransom


End file.
